"It is easy to say that I should have known everything, I should have understood everything, and thus I could have intervened or rectified the situation at the time," he said. "Do you really think that that was what I wanted to happen to my people?"
August 7, 2014
A life sentence, 40 years after the fact, for Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, who are 83 and 88, respectively.
"Both men denied the allegations against them, although Khieu Samphan did admit that mass killings took place – blaming Pol Pot’s extreme brand of communism."
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21 comments:
"Do you really think that that was what I wanted to happen to my people?"
Yes, I do. You wanted to purify your society, to create a classless utopia--and you thought that the only way to do that was to exterminate the bourgeois elements that presently existed.
As Mao told us, "A revolution is not a tea party." And as all Americans know, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
Yes, he did want that slaughter to happen to his people to show his power over them. Communists like Obama are always saying that a real understanding their arrogant evil intentions is just silly...why no one could ever be that bad.
Socialism, by its very nature, requires murder. Usually on the scale of a China, Russia, Germany, Cambodia etc.
Read Marx' Capital and you will find why on page 4 (of the Penguin edition)
My real question is why did it take so long?
And who are we to judge? Right?
Just kidding, I would happily make them spend the rest of their lives in a very small (say 2 X 2 X 6) bamboo cage being paraded from village to village to show them for the monsters that they are.
John Henry
The KR was one of the worst regimes in modern history, even by Communist standards. A textbook example of government by force, the natural devolution of any command state. The criminals who ran that regime deserve a special place in hell for what they've done.
I'm sure modern communist apologists would argue that the Pol Pot regime (as well as North Korea, or the Cultural Revolution, or Stalinism) was just an example of "good ideas being perverted by evil people or faulty execution" but the fact remains that such a system can only lead to such terrors, because there's no rule of law or respect of liberty to counter the natural abuses committed by those who feel the need to control. It will always happen in such cases, and all the more reason for free people to understand what it is that keeps us free.
"Pol Pot's extreme brand of communism" is redundant. Probably triple-redundant.
I do not like excuse making for what communism is and always will be.
Mein Fuhrer had the most honest of intentions! It was to be a glorious workers paradise! Just some pesky reactionaries were told they had to go. We didn't know that 1/3 of the county were of such a mind!
It just kind of got out of hand. Oupse!
Wow.
It is positively shameful how slow the wheels of justice turn when it comes to mass killings.
America's been so lucky,...
John,
"Socialism, by its very nature, requires murder."
So do Democracy and capitalism, apparently - ask the Indians and blacks.
White guys wear blinders when they think it convenient.
Or they think they're alone with other whites.
If you had more blacks around - or even whites who aren't brainwashed - you'd think before you spoke like this.
Actually, you wouldn't speak like this.
You'd talk about plants,...
It is worth noting here that by the time the Khmer Rouge was founded in 1968 (much less when it came to power in 1975) the Red Terror, the Holodomor, the Great Purge, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution were all in the books.
So: yeah, I'm afraid I do believe that the high-muckety mucks of the Khmer Rouge (and every other Communist of the late 20th century) fully intended that such atrocities be visited upon their people. The nature of Communism had long been revealed.
The article points out that the tribunal, started in 2006, has cost over 200 million dollars and has convicted, to date, just one defendant. This is how it works out when liberals are allowed to pursue justice in their own way in their own time......Something like this compounds the injustice that was done to the Cambodian people. The subtext is that their lives are not worth much. You can kill millions of them and punishment for their mass murder is subordinate to the most exquisite forms of due process.
I'm not sure that there is a punishment severe enough for such examples of pure evil. They'd get along great with the ISIS filth who are currently committing genocide in Irag.
One of the saddest things I ever saw was the film Cambodia put together to accompany an exhibit of Cambodian art at one of the D.C. museums years ago. Magnificent pieces of their heritage and they couldn't find one Cambodian to knowledgeably discuss the pieces. Seriously embarrassing to watch and drove home the truth of the previously unbelievable reports of the KR killing everyone in the country who could read or write.
If we had more blacks around we would be eating cabinet ministers, enslaving underage african girls, taking machetes to entire populations and raping virgin girls to kill off AIDS.
You know, standard blacks/crack stuff we see this very day.
mass murder and summary execution have been a part of socialism since at least the French Revolution and the national razor
Khmer Rouge leaders were mostly educated in France. They were for the "working class" and supposedly, for the "working man" (after all, they must have bamboozled enough of them to win).
And yet they installed a regime which murdered 1.6 million people out of 7 million in 3 years (latest figure I read).
So I rather think the "rights" they were for were of "hypothetical" people, not living breathing ones.
I think this is one of the things which defines the left, the "hypothetical man".
"You'd talk about plants,..."
"Let a hundred flowers bloom."
See? It's not always whites and it's not always about race. This whole plant "dog whistle" thing is much more pervasive and insidious than even you ever suspected.
I've visited Cambodia twice in the last several years. The people of Cambodia are still paying for the atrocities of Ho Chi Minh (during our visits, we were told more than once that Pol Pot was but a puppet for Ho). Cambodia is not a third-world country, it's a fourth world country. They should be taken to the "Killing Fields" and uncerimoniously shot.
Most of the news stories I've read about this neglect to mention that these gentlemen were the leaders of the Cambodian Communist Party. Indeed, the murders committed by the Khmer Rouge were not random, they weren't committed by insane people, they weren't a few people who went off the deep end. They were deliberate effort by the Communist Party to create an egalitarian society. To accomplish the goal of perfect equality, they decided to eliminate all who were too rich, too educated, too famous, too bourgeois, etc. The murders they committed were the logical end point of radical egalitarianism. The French Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution had the same goals but weren't quite a methodical in accomplishing them. It would be nice to see some of the Piketty fanbois acknowledge such.
Interesting Belmont CLub today .
Something of this present tragedy was foreshadowed in the casual way with which the Left regarded the exodus of the boat people from Vietnam and the Cambodian Killing Fields as collateral damage; something ironic in an anti-war movement that finishes up empowering the greatest seaborne exodus in the history of the world and the massacre of millions.
But if there’s irony it escapes them. After all, ‘how could we have known,’ they ask, ‘that the people we supported were murderers? We meant well.’
We meant well. And to make up for the sins of the past, the world is sentencing two two doddering officials of the Khmer Rouge regime (that’s ‘Red Khmer’ to those of us who can’t read French) convicted of ‘crimes against humanity’ to life. And maybe 50 years from now they’ll round up some former ISIS fighters in wheelchairs and walkers and sentence them to life as well. As for the Yahzidis, they’ve been sentenced to death.
The left is content with its self regard.
"THOMASt WREN said...
...They should be taken to the "Killing Fields" and uncerimoniously shot.
8/7/14, 11:45 AM"
I thought the preferred method was suffocation using a plastic bag over their heads?
All the killing fields outside of Phnom Pehn, the preferred method of killing adults was beating their heads in with an axe. Babies were swung against a tree trunk. I guess the Communists didn't want to waste bullets.
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